LORENZAGO DI CADORE, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI reasserted the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church, approving a document released yesterday that says other Christian communities are either defective or not true churches and Catholicism provides the only true path to salvation.
The statement brought swift criticism from Protestant leaders. "It makes us question whether we are indeed praying together for Christian unity," the World Alliance of Reformed Churches, a fellowship of 75 million Protestants in more than 100 countries, said in a letter charging that the document took ecumenical dialogue back to the era before the Second Vatican Council, which modernized the church.
Benedict has long criticized what he considers Vatican II's erroneous interpretation by liberals. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said it was issuing the new document because some contemporary theological interpretations of Vatican II were confusing. The new document restates key sections of a 2000 text Benedict wrote before he was pope that riled Christian denominations by saying they were not true churches, but merely ecclesial communities, and therefore did not have the "means of salvation."
"Christ 'established here on earth' only one church," said the new document, released as the pope vacations in Italy's Dolomite mountains. The other communities "cannot be called 'churches' in the proper sense" because they cannot trace their bishops back to Christ's original apostles, it said.
The Rev. Sara MacVane of Rome's Anglican Centre said she did not know what motivated the document's release, but it's important to remember "the huge amount of friendship and fellowship" between Catholics and others.
